My pile of books and journals haunts me. Each one doesn’t have anything to do or be part of at the moment; unread and unused, awaiting its destiny. But the potential of each one sits there and mocks me.

My idea of minimalism is to simplify. If I don’t need it then I shouldn’t have it. I should not consume more than I need. The simpler my life is the more I can do with it; the less I carry the further I can travel etc etc etc (I may be channeling Yul Brynner).

So why do I struggle when it comes to journals, notebooks and the like?

The image above is not what I have, my stash is in a box hidden away, but what I am actively using. This is a snapshot of my current daily stash. How can I possibly need all those at the same time?

I have a Midori Traveller’s Notebook that is my diary and notebook

A Moleskine that I am using for journaling and monthly focus

A Moleskine for art, or quotes or inspiration

A MoleskineVolant for blog planning

A song journal, for song writing

An Iconic Essay Book for noting things to learn (a commonplace book)

A small prayer journal (two actually)

An A4 pad for my morning pages

A Midori Passport size, which doubles as my wallet

An A4 layout pad, for when you need a little room for ideas

An A3 sketch pad, for when you need even more room for ideas

An A4 art pad, for those rare moments when I get visually creative

A pocket Moleskine that is kept in my bag in case I forget to take out one of the above with me

At any given time there may be additional scraps of paper or post-its in use too. I am a stationery junkie, or at least the journal / notebook aspect of stationery. Now I know that there are some of you out there who have and use far more than me. I wonder if there is a need to set up a help group to discuss our addiction. However, we’d only share and inspire each other to buy more.

I don’t want to work, or be, this way though. I want things simple and in one place. Part of my problem is that I have decided a task should take place in a particular journal. Therefore I have a separate notebook for each task. However, I should, or could, have one notebook for several tasks. Have I confused my minimalism in order to absolve my stationery fetish?

The number of notebooks is a problem because I can’t keep them with me when I head out and travel. I find that I am also duplicating things in more than one notebook, this, for my minimalist intentions and general productivity, is a bad thing.

So one task for the next few months is to pare down the number of notebooks I use. I can already see that several can be combined. I will take it slowly though, this sort of thing can’t be rushed, and, of course, each current notebook will have to be filled and completed 🙂 . As you can see I have a long way to go when it comes to minimalism zen in my journal collection.

I’ll try and share my journey and any recommendations, hints and tips I discover along the way. I have a feeling this could take a while though.

I suppose I should also have mentioned that I use several electronic journals too, perhaps that’s another post.